The Thousand SortOf Snowball War
by Heartless Shinra Alchemist
Summary: Namine decides to mess with the weather in the Data Twilight Town.


Namine sighed as she woke up, reallizing that this would be another day of boredom, of the endless task of watching over Sora while DiZ and Riku sat scheming their little schemes. They could plan and plot all they wanted, but Namine knew that it would all fail. The heart was not something to be tamed, to be tampered with, for if you did, the heart would be torn asunder. Namine knew this well from personal experience. In fact, it was her daily job to look over and reconstruct the memories of the victim of that experience. Namine shivered as she thought of that castle, with its coldly beautiful sculptures of flowers and the eerie glass ball that Marluxia made her use to tear apart Sora's memories. She slowly slipped out of the small room in the corner of the mansion and climbed up the stairs, insubstantial and silent as a shadow. She cringed as one of the old stairs creaked and waited for Dusks to float in out of nowhere or Creepers to come dripping off the walls. Nothing happened and Namine slowly relaxed. Once she was sure there was no threat, she continued her silent procession into her blank white room. Her sketchbooks sat on the table, oil pastels scattered every which way. These pastels and Namine's eyes were the only color in the room. The rest was blank white, with maybe a stripe of light blue here and there, but nothing substantial. Nothing that fooled her into thinking that she was real. That's what DiZ wanted, after all. For her not only to know that she was Nothing, but to feel that she was Nothing. She sighed her usual, empty sigh and sat down carefully on her cold and very uncomfortable chair.

"What should I draw today?" she asked herself softly. She sat, staring at a red pastel. Red. Sora's color. Red was passionate, cheerful, and powerful. Sora was red just as Roxas was blue. Blue was deep, captivating, and tinged with sadness. Namine sighed as she reallized what color she was. White. Not even a color at all, just empty of brightness or hues. Empty and unfullfilling. With a sudden burst of what might have been anger if she really could feel, she hurled the red pastel at the window. Her empty blue eyes slowly followed its trail, but widened when her eyes looked out of the window. Snow. Beautiful snow that fell into graceful heaps on the white ground. Her mouth twitched and she couldn't help but smile. She knew what she had to do today. She slowly walked over to the window and picked up the pastel, her skin feeling the icy chill coming off the glass of the window. She picked up the sketchbook and the pastels and placed them neatly in a cabinet. Then, with more speed than she had thought possible, she flew down the stairs and out the front door of the mansion. Running through the courtyard, she threw her arms up in exaultation. She danced and whirled in the snow, snow landing on her hair and skin, chilling her to the bone. But she didn't care, feeling cold was better than nothing. She recalled from jumbled memories of her past life and of Sora's memories of something called snowball fights. She could still remember the joy that she almost felt when viewing Sora hitting Wakka in the back of the head with a snowball, smushing the orange curl down onto his head. An idea dawned on Namine and her smile returned, more radiant than ever. She rushed into the mansion.

DiZ had taught Namine enough of how the data-Twilight Town worked that she knew how to change the weather. She was still smiling as she rapidly typed digits into the computer. After she was sure it was snowing in the data-word, she typed 'Sea-Salt Ice Cream' into the computer and grabbed her sketchbook and case of pastels. She ran into the beam of light, teleporting herself into the data-Twilight Town.

Roxas woke up to find it snowing. The sight of the frozen water drifting gently from the sky caused him to whoop in joy. He jumped out of bed, tossed his grey and white pajamas off, and wriggled into his jacket and jeans. He almost ran down the stairs before he reallized that he had forgotten his shirt.

"Stupid idiot!" he smacked himself on the head and put his shirt on, rapidly pulling the jacket on over it. He grabbed his skateboard before rushing out the door and towards the Usual Place.

"Hey, Roxas!" Hayner called as Roxas rushed in, panting. There was a scrape on his left cheek that was slowly oozing blood. Olette rushed up to him, worried.

"I'm fine," he scoffed, lightly brushing her aside. He turned to Pence. "So where's it gonna be?" he asked casually. Pence looked at him, questioning.

"Where's what going to be?" he asked, running a hand through his untidy hair. Roxas rolled his eyes and groaned.

"The snowball fight, you nimrod."

"Oh," Pence chuckled, blushing. "Well, we were thinking about that grove of trees, right in front of that creepy mansion. There's lots of hills for us to use as forts there." Hayner and Olette nodded.

"Yeah," Olette said, grinning. "and the losers have to buy the winners hot chocolate. Oh, and Seifer wants to come too." Her enthusiasim died as she mentioned the last part. Roxas frowned bitterly.

"Don't tell me you told him yes," he groaned. Hayner grinned apologetically.

"Well, I owed him a favor, so he made me agree..." he frowned. "But that leaves one team with an extra player." Roxas frowned.

"What, his gang aren't coming along?" he scoffed, skeptical. Hayner nodded.

"Vivi's got a cold, and the other two are off early for the holidays," he shrugged. Roxas sighed.

"Well, I guess we'll sort this out later." He walked out, his skateboard under his arm.

Roxas and the gang walked into the grove to find Seifer already waiting for them. His eyebrows came down at a slant as they walked up to him.

"I thought you said you'd find someone to even out the teams," he accused. Hayner took a step forward, growling.

"Hey, nobody else wants to come. We've asked nearly fifteen people!" Seifer stepped forward, taking Hayner's challenge.

"I thought you could do something this simple, but-" Seifer's voice trailed off as Roxas ceased to pay attention to the two sqabblers. He couldn't help but feel like someone else was there, watching him. His eyes scanned the field of white snow and tree trunks. He would've completely missed Namine, if it weren't for the fact that her eyes were set on him. He walked forward, towards the girl. She made a movement as if to run away, but she stayed put. She reminded Roxas of a scared rabbit. He smile gently, extending a hand to her.

"Hey, I'm Roxas. What's your name?" she tentatively took his hand.

"Aerith," she replied, using the first name that popped in her head. Roxas grinned.

"Aerith, my friends and I are having a bit of a crisis here. Would you join our snowball fight to even the numbers?" his eyes were sincere and Namine was speechless.

"Me?" she whispered faintly. Roxas nodded with a bemused smile.

"Duh," he retorted. Namine couldn't help but smile back. His grin was infectious.

"Sure," she replied, moving beside him so that they could walk to Hayner, Pence, Olette, and Seifer. Pence and Olette hovered nervously over Hayner, and Seifer looked like he was about to throw some punches. Roxas strode over to Seifer and indicated Namine.

"Aerith here is going to play, allright? Ya happy now?" he frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. Seifer grinned.

"Just as long as she's not on my team," he sneered. Roxas scowled.

"She won't," he jabbed a thumb into his chest. "She's on my team." His arm curled protectively around Namine's shoulders and her face was astonished. Seifer's grin grew wider.

"Fine. I get Hayner," he grabbed the aforementioned boy by the back of his shirt and half-dragged him over to the other end of the grove. Olette and Pence shrugged, knowing they would be the first to fall, and crossed to the far west end of the grove. Roxas grinned and indicated a large hill twenty feet behind them.

"C'mon, let's build our fort over there," he grabbed her hand and the two ran behind the hill. Once behind it, he began smoothing snow over the hill, building in little crevasses for them to use as footholds. Namine diligently formed sphere after sphere of compacted snow. While the two worked, Roxas explained the rules. "Okay. The point is to smack the others with snowballs until they surrender. Now, Olette and Pence'll be pushovers, so we'll let Seifer and Hayner take care of them. We'll keep making snowballs so that by the time we can focus on Seifer and Hayner, we'll have tons of ammo and they'll have next to none after eliminating Olette and Pence." Namine frowned slightly.

"Is there a reason winning is so important?" she asked softly to herself, but Roxas heard her. He stopped dead in his tracks.

"Yes." he said gravely, as if he were speaking of those who had died in a war. "Winning is that important"

"Why?" Namine looked up at him, hoping for some sort of answer. She found it; Roxas was grinning widely.

"'Cause I want that hot chocolate, dammit!" He turned to his work and Namine turned to hers, both grinning with a purpose.

Olette and Pence threw the first snowball. It was directed at Seifer, who had been perched at the top of his fort, flattening a surface to build a shied of sorts. The snowball hit him without much force, but it surprised him so much that he toppled off of the fort and into a snowbank below it. When he pulled himself up, face red, he yelled, "I'm gonna get you bastards!!!" And with that, the snow war had begun. Namine continued to make snowballs, but she now passed them to Roxas, who would find openings to throw a snowball without getting blamed for it. No one threw any snowballs at Roxas and Namine, the other two were so wrapped up in obliterating each other that it seemed to Namine that they didn't even know the two existed. She snorted at how fitting that was. After all, she and Roxas were Nobodies. After about thirty minutes, Olette and Pence stepped out from behind their fortress, their hands up in the air, outstreched to show that this was not a trick.

"We surrender!" Pence called. The responce was a single snowball thrown in his face by Seifer. Pence slapped the slush off his face and went with Olette to find shelter. Seifer turned towards Roxas and Namine's fort.

"You want to surrender now? Don't want to mess up your girlfriend's pretty little face..." he taunted. Namine's response was to fly out from her hiding spot behind the fortress and pelt Seifer with four snowballs, all in the face. She giggled and Roxas let out a triumphant 'Nice!' She ws quick to retreat, however, when she saw Seifer's furious glare. A wave of snowballs flew, most landing over their heads, but one managed to smack Roxas in the back of the head. His flyaway hair was dripping and damp, but he just grinned and pointed to the pile of snowballs, and then to Olette and Pence's base. Namine understood, Roxas needed a distraction. So she ran out screaming like an asylum patient, running as fast as she could for the abandoned base. While she did so, Roxas managed to smack Hayner three times and Seifer twice. She laughed as she heard Seifer's furious growl and Hayner's laugh as he saw how wet he was. Then, she got an idea. She got Roxas' attention. She tried to communicate as best as possible for him to make a distraction. He nodded and Namine hoped he understood. She waited until she heard him speak, and almost began to laugh. He was singing very off-key and very loudly:

Who's the stupidest kid in the neighborhood?

Seifer says I, Seifer says I!

Who's the bossiest kid in the neighborhood?

Seifer says I, Seifer says I!

Who's got the biggest ego in the neighborhood?

I can't tell, is it Seifer or I?

Why is my ego so big, you say?

'Cause I can kick Seifer's ass any day!

Whil Roxas sang his boisterous song several times through, Namine crept over to Seifer and Hayner's fort. Hayner saw her, but he just grinned and turned back to throwing snowballs at Roxas. She crept slowly until she was ten feet behind the fort. Then, she grabbed an armful of snow and ran as fast as she could toward the two boys. Screaming at the top of her lungs, she crashed into them, destroying their fort and covering the three of them in snow. She searched the pile for Hayner. After finding him, she swiftly kissed him. He blushed and yelled, "We surrender!" Seifer was furious.

"You backstabber!" he cried, turning on Hayner. Namine just frowned and kissed Seifer swiftly. Seifer stopped and stared into thin air. She just laughed and helped Hayner up. "You win," Seifer whispered, stumbling away in a daze.

Namine sat next to Roxas on a heater in the Usual Place. Olette and Pence sat on the floor below them and Hayner sat on a box next to them. Seifer sat on the other side of the room, but was still part of the conversation. They all sat drinking hot chocolate out of white styrofoam cups. The laughing and the teasing going on made Namine feel both more empty and full at the same time. She smiled sadly as Olette said, "Hey, Aerith, its supposed to snow tomorrow, too. You want to come and kick Seifer's butt again?" Seifer groaned, but Namine could tell that he was smiling. She felt a warmth inside her and blamed it on the hot chocolate and the heater she was sitting on.

"I'd love to," she lied. Not that she didn't want to come back, but she knew that she couldn't. She hopped off the heater. "Thanks, you guys, but I have to get home. I really had fun today, more fun that I've had in a long time." She smiled as she saw everyone else's smiles. She handed Roxas her cup of hot chocolate. "Here," she whispered, kissing him on the cheek. The last sound she heard as she walked out the door was Olette's laughing.

Now in the computer room, Namine got onto the database and erased everyone's memory of her. She filled it in with the picture of a girl with black hair, green eyes, and a warm smile. She got up slowly, trying to ignore the fact that there were tears spilling from her eyes. She grabbed her sketchbook and pastels and went back to her empty white room. As she looked at the walls, she realized that she no longer thought of white as the color of emptiness. It was the color of snow.


End file.
